Some local faces will be featured at the 2021 International Film Festival put on by the Okotoks Film Society. 

The festival, entering its fifth year, prides itself on providing local filmmakers with an opportunity to get their work featured in a festival. With local foothills, Alberta, and international films getting streamed right to your living rooms as a part of this year's festival.

Festival Director, Katie Fournell says they have films from almost every continent and most of them are short films.

"Our short film packages are stellar and phenomenal. Most of the films we get submitted to the festival are short films, so we have quite the variety to get to choose from in order to program a really eclectic  Film Festival for everybody."

The shorts are packaged into different categories. Primetime, Afternoon, Kinder Reels and 18+ Twisted Reels. New this year is a country highlight showing a collection of films are made in, by or about Mexico.

She adds they were hoping to do a hybrid of in-person events as well as online but with the new "Open for Summer Plan" unveiled earlier in the week not allowing theatres to open up just yet they will be holding the event entirely online. 

Also new to this year's festival is a selection of On-Demand films that will be available from May 30 - June 12.

Alongside works from Germany, Iran, France, Japan and dozens of other countries, there are a few locally made films their way into the festival. 

Okotokians Shawna and Alissa Koski are some of the many to have one of the short films screened at the festival. Their film 'A Gourd-Head's Lessons in Humanity' follows a gourd who spontaneously comes to life and learns what it means to be human. You can see that as a part of the afternoon shorts, Sunday the 6th starting at noon. 

Fournell says it's always been important to support locals. 

"It's been hugely important to us that we get to keep celebrating close to home at the same time we're celebrating the entire world."

One of the highlights of the festival is the 48 Hour Challenge. Taking place over the May long weekend, the challenge tasked filmmakers to make a short film in 2 days. 

"We had 20 teams take the challenge and there are 16 films that we will be showing at the closing night of the festival. It is our most popular event. It's definitely one of the most creative as people are trying to get those props and genres into the film and it's just all-around a pretty exciting time." says Fournell

It consists of mostly local filmmakers with one team from Eastern Canada and another from LA.

The festival will run from June 3rd till Sunday, June 6th. Kicking off with the feature film 'Jasmine Road' by Warren Sulatycky. It follows a recently widowed western rancher who takes in a Syrian refugee family in the conservative part of Red River.

Ticket details and the film schedule can be found on the Film Festivals Website and will be streamed right to your house.

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